


the one just suited to our mind

by theboysgonehome



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Asperger Syndrome, Autism, Autistic Spencer Reid, Getting Together, M/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8688295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboysgonehome/pseuds/theboysgonehome
Summary: At age 8, Spencer is diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. At age 24, Derek Morgan kisses him. These two things are probably not related.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Early Reid is so textbook ASD, I couldn't help myself. The world needs more actual autistic!Spencer Reid. I modeled the resource room from his childhood after a more modern program, though, because that's what I know.
> 
> This is set early season 2 (post-Fisher King, pre-Profiler, Profiled/Revelations/etc.).
> 
> Many thanks to my friend Kimba for the beta.

_1990_

At age 8, Spencer was separated from his middle school classmates for one class period a day. He was pleased because it got him out of gym class, and his mother told him the class was only for really special students, like him. There had been something off about her expression, about the way his father had met her eyes but not Spencer’s, but facial expressions were always difficult to decode, so he shrugged it off.

He wasn’t surprised, then, when there were only four other students in the class. Mrs. Briggs was the teacher, and she had a smile that made Spencer think of sunflowers and summer days. Spencer liked her right away.

Mrs. Briggs didn’t offer instruction in mathematics or literature. She had a beautiful star chart on the wall above her desk, and Spencer loved getting lost looking at it, but she didn’t teach astronomy, either. Spencer couldn’t really figure out what subject she taught. She did something different with each of the students in the class. She asked Spencer weird questions like “how is your motor running?” and encouraged him to read poetry out loud. On bad days, she’d let him curl up in one of the bean bag chairs in the corner and she would read it back to him. It wasn’t his mother’s voice, but it was enough. It was enough.

She had bookshelves that ran along an entire wall of her classroom, which contained an entire shelf full of matching white binders. One Wednesday, when Spencer was agitated from something his classmate had said in science class, she pulled one down. His hands tapped against his knees, fluttered up by his face, tapped against his knees. The binder said _My Peers and Me_ on the cover and she set it on the desk in front of them.

She flipped to a page called _When I Feel Frustrated_ , and Spencer saw it was a story. A very short one, with pictures, like he was some kind of little kid. Like he hadn’t been reading _Beowulf_ with his mother just last night. Spencer read it in a few seconds, and his eyebrows drew together.

“This story lacks a cohesive narrative structure,” he said. “Also, the narrator only identifies themselves as ‘I’, which doesn’t allow for much emotional connection from the reader.”

“Think about it more like a concept you would study from a textbook.” Mrs. Briggs tapped her nail on the page, drawing his eyes back.

Spencer’s eyebrows furrowed further. “Textbooks aren’t written in first person perspective.”

“You’re right,” she acknowledged. “But try thinking about it like that anyway.” 

Spencer tried. He really did. He just couldn’t see what was so important about this unnamed narrator and his frustration. But he wanted to please Mrs. Briggs, so he read it again anyway.

 

_2006_

_I have good manners_ , Spencer thinks. The jet is full of his colleagues’ voices, volleying theories and observations at each other like tennis balls, and Spencer’s thoughts are falling over themselves, trying to inject his own annotations into every explanation at once. He takes a deep breath and recites the long-ago memorized story. _I have good manners. I do not interrupt when others are talking. I am quiet when the teacher is talking to someone else_.

He wonders if Gideon would mind being thought of as the teacher in this scenario. Probably he wouldn’t.

A hand hovers over Spencer’s sleeve and he tenses instinctively. It pulls away, curling in on itself in its owner’s lap.

“You okay?” Derek Morgan asks. “You look like you’re thinking pretty hard over there.”

“I’m okay,” Spencer nods. “It’s loud in here.”

Derek digs into his go bag, producing a plastic bag of ear plugs and tilting them in Spencer’s direction.

Spencer shakes his head and wrinkles his nose. He’s tried ear plugs before, although the brand he tried were pink, not minty green like the ones Derek is offering. He couldn’t stand the feel of them in his ears. It’s why he doesn’t wear ear buds, either.

Derek shrugs, sitting down again. “Want my headphones?”

“I don’t have an ipod.”

“I know. You could listen to mine. Or you could just, you know, put them on. They’re pretty good at cutting down on the noise.”

Spencer shakes his head again, slower this time. “Thanks. I’m okay.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.” 

There’s something warm in Derek’s eyes. Spencer likes to catalogue his colleagues’ moods, the physical tells of their emotional states. It makes future interactions easier. There‘s something warm in Derek’s eyes, and it doesn’t go away when JJ draws him back into discussion about the case.

 

_1990_

Mrs. Briggs had bins full of strange things you wouldn’t normally find in classrooms. There were little toys that were good for when your hands couldn’t stay still, and things that spun or changed colors that were good for watching when you needed to slow down your motor. Larry liked a plastic toy that clicked loudly when you spun it. Spencer liked a little ball with bumps all over it. It felt good to roll it over the back of his hand or across his cheek. 

There were also big headphones whose cords had been cut. Isabelle would sometimes put on a pair and sit in a bean bag chair with her eyes shut tight. Mrs. Briggs explained that sometimes the world got too loud for Isabelle. Spencer had never needed the headphones.

 

_2006_

Spencer learned in college how to differentiate between friendly teasing and mean teasing. Sometimes it’s still hard for him to tell which is which, but he knows that his team would only ever engage in friendly teasing. He takes it in stride when they tease him about Lila because he knows they mean it with love. Besides, they often partake in friendly teasing at moments like this, when they are facing down a difficult case and have talked the facts to death, and there is nothing else to do before they land.

“I bet you’ve never had a kiss like that before,” Elle laughs, and Spencer finds that it stings a little, but he shrugs off the feeling. This is friendly teasing, not mean teasing. He knows that, so his feelings shouldn’t be hurt.

“Nah,” Derek says, ruffling Spencer’s hair affectionately. “I bet plenty of nubile young actresses have thrown themselves at you.”

Spencer bats Derek’s hand away from his head. “Shut up.”

Still, Spencer wishes there had been stories in class about this. _How to tell if you should call a girl_ , maybe, or _the pros and cons of long distance relationships_.

The truth was, there hadn’t been girls until he’d been going for his second doctorate. Then, finally, he’d been the same age as the undergraduates, and he found himself on the receiving end of the occasional flirtatious glance. He’d kissed girls and boys, and lost his virginity between his second and third doctorate. Still, he knew that most people saw him as asexual. He‘s used to people making assumptions about that part of his life.

He’d longed for Mrs. Brigg’s stories back then, too. He knew the one about not letting his classmates bully him into giving them answers ( _I resist his request, making it clear that I will not be pressured into anything_ ) and the one about puberty ( _Your body will experience changes. All bodies experience changes_ ). Nothing, though, about when the boy in the front row of the class where you’re TA asks you out for coffee, kisses you outside the dormitories, and then asks if you can get Professor Hillston to reconsider his grade.

“They may not have been actresses,” Spencer says, sliding his voice into the tone used for friendly teasing. “But there have definitely been girls.”

“I knew it!” Morgan laughs, the sound of it filling the cabin. “You dog.” 

Spencer sips at his coffee, hiding his smile. “The pool was new, though.”

 

_1990_

He didn’t understand the stories Mrs. Briggs was putting in front of him until she put down the right one. It was two weeks before the winter dance, and it was called _Asking Someone to the Dance_.

All at once, the light went on in Spencer’s brain. “Oh! They’re not stories; they’re instructions!”

“Well, yes,” Mrs. Briggs laughed, a bewildered smile blooming like the snowdrops that used to grow in the front garden.

Spencer now saw it completely. How the stories were supposed to teach him the rules and interactions of situations that his peers seemed to have learned ages ago, leaving him behind. He’d always assumed that was about his age – that when he caught up with them, he’d know the things they knew. Had they read these binders? Was that why he was in this class, because he was younger? But his classmates in this room weren’t his age; they were twelve and thirteen.

Either way, these binders had the answers he needed, the information he’d been missing. He devoured them after that, spending as much time as Mrs. Briggs would allow reading and rereading them cover to cover. Some of the information he already knew – like how to open his locker – but so much of it put rules and expectations over what had previously been murky uncertainty. 

Rules were good. Order was necessary. There were fewer days, after that, where he lost the power of speech. Fewer days where his hands seemed out of his control and his emotions got tangled like a ball of yarn somewhere between his chest and stomach. More control. More control was good.

 

_2006_

By the time Spencer joined the BAU, his control over his episodes was pretty firm. They got so infrequent, that Spencer hardly even thought about it anymore. It was like catching a cold; he just needed rest and the right combination of inputs, and he’d soon be back on track.

It had never happened during a case.

He can admit it: he’s been unsettled since they caught this case. The board in front of him displays a line of teenage black boys, each one abducted exactly one week after the one before, and it makes Reid’s skin itch. He has ways to deal with the feeling – a little Tupperware of kinetic sand in his desk drawer at Quantico, a bumpy ball in his go bag, a coin in his pocket – but the local PD here have been eyeing him with derision since they landed, and Spencer isn’t going to fuel whatever negative impressions they might already harbor.

He takes his watch off and stuffs it in his pocket. Usually, the layer of his shirt is enough to guard him against the unsettling feeling of the latch against the inside of his wrist, but today, just the weight of it is constricting.

“Reid?” Hotch is looking at him, eyebrows lifted. Spencer becomes aware of the team’s eyes on him, expectant and heavy. “What do you think?”

Spencer opens his mouth. His eyes go wide. He clears his throat, grateful for the noise of it, and opens his mouth again.

_No_ , he thinks. _Not now. Not here._

He holds up one finger and bolts for the bathroom. He stares at his reflection, noticing the circles under his eyes. Has he been getting enough sleep lately?

_Come on_ , he meets his own eyes. He tries to call up a good piece of echolalia. Sometimes, if he can start with someone else’s words, he can ease back into his own.

_How am I going to be an optimist about this?_ He thinks, and almost laughs. He shakes his head, takes a deep breath. _If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it._

He tries to force his mouth into the right shapes. _If_ should be easy to say. He can almost feel his mouth forming the word, but the stillness in his reflection gives him away.

He stumbles back into the conference room a few minutes later and grabs a legal pad. Even writing is difficult when he is like this. Mrs. Briggs had once talked to him about the part of the brain that controls the output of language and Spencer has done plenty of his own research since. But writing, while limited, is at least possible, unlike auditory speech.

He manages a few two-word sentences and hands the pad to Hotch, who reads the words out loud.

“Can’t talk. I’m okay. Explain later.” The whole team has their eyes on Spencer, they have since he came back from the bathroom, and Spencer scratches at his neck, wishing he’d clipped the tag out of this shirt when he bought it last week. “Reid, what’s going on?”

Spencer points to the last sentence and shrugs, feeling the heat in his face.

It’s JJ who takes pity on him. “Are you feeling okay? I could drop you off at the hotel on the way to the parents’ house.”

He thinks about it. His instinct is to say no, to stick with the case, but the hotel can offer him quiet, and the privacy to stim in whatever way he needs. He can always call if he recovers. He turns his eyes to Hotch, nodding.

There is a pause before Hotch exhales, lips quirking downward. His expression wavers between emotions and Spencer tries to categorize them, flipping through his mental catalogue of Hotch’s micro-expressions. The set of his mouth says impatient, resentful of the distraction from the case, but his eyebrows say concerned. “Take care. But we’re in for a conversation later.” 

Spencer nods quickly and follows JJ to the parking lot.

 

_1990_

It was Mrs. Briggs who explained that, no, most people don’t keep notebooks full of quotes they like. Most people don’t enjoy repeating their favorite quotes ad nauseam to anyone who will listen. Most people don’t fall back on those quotes when it’s too stressful to string together your own sentences. Most people don’t have days where it’s significantly harder to get the words out.

Spencer had always figured it was normal. His mother sometimes went days without speaking. She had notebooks full of everything. Sometimes they challenged themselves to have conversations that were entirely made of quotes from books.

“Words, words. They're all we have to go on,” he remembers his mother saying, making him laugh.

“You can’t respond to _Hamlet_ with _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ ,” he insisted. “That’s like cheating!”

“I win,” his mother had said, voice and smile soft. “Let’s play again.”

Spencer shifted in his desk and looked away from Mrs. Briggs’ kind gaze. “Does that mean I have schizophrenia, like my mom?”

She blinked at him for a moment. “Spencer… has no one told you your diagnosis?”

Spencer remembers the battery of tests he’d undergone before they moved him to this class. That wasn’t unusual, though. He’d taken quite a few tests in his short life, and he was sure there would be more in the future. “Diagnosis?” 

There had been a story in the binders about having a diagnosis. About how everyone experiences diagnoses in their lives, with everything from Attention Deficit Disorder to the common cold. It was much more normal to have a diagnosis than not to have one. He remembered that.

 

_2006_

Someone was knocking on his hotel door.

“Hey, pretty boy,” a familiar voice floats through the wood. “You in there?”

Spencer unlocks the door, opening it and stepping aside so Derek can enter.

“You okay?” Derek hands Spencer a large Starbucks cup. “You’ve got everyone pretty worried about you.”

“I'm not much but I'm all I have.” Spencer sips the coffee and closes his eyes happily.

“Is that from something?”

Spencer nods. He’s worked his way up to echolalia, at least. He’ll probably be able to communicate capably in writing now, too.

Derek makes himself at home, slumping into the armchair in the corner of the room.

Spencer sits at the foot of the bed, facing him. He thinks back to a story called _Polite Conversation_. “Tell me about your day.”

Derek laughs, rubbing his palms over his face. He has almost two days’ worth of prickly stubble and Spencer wonders what it would feel like under his fingers. “Garcia’s using an algorithm to try and work out the geographical profile. I think it’s our best bet, right now. The computer will be faster than anyone else on the team, but not as good as you.”

Spencer blushes a little, fingers picking at the cardboard sleeve around the coffee cup.

“We need more information, but that would require, you know.”

Spencer does know. A body. “If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.”

“You’re not kidding.” Derek’s phone rings and Spencer watches the softness return to the lines of his face. “Hey, baby girl.”

Spencer watches the muscles in Derek’s face move, listens to the shifting intonation of his voice. Every clue points to a flirtatious attraction, but Derek doesn’t follow the rules as Spencer knows them. He knows there is nothing romantic between Derek and Garcia because she told him so, in very clear terms. They are friends, and will always be friends.

“The algorithm is done,” Derek says, flipping his phone shut. He stands, picking up his coffee cup.

Spencer stands just as quickly, grabbing his jacket and reaching for his shoes.

“Hold up a minute,” Derek says. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Grabbing the hotel stationary, Spencer scrawls out a message, biting his lip. _I’m close to talking again. You need me on the geographical profile. I’m okay._

Derek reads the note, one eyebrow quirking upward. “Close to talking isn’t talking, kid.” 

“I will shout until they know what I mean,” Spencer says.

 

_1991_

Jenny Gilbert was the first one to use Mrs. Briggs against him. Her best friend was Fiona Dutton, a small sixth grader who was only two years older than Spencer, despite his being two grades above her. She was smart, and loved to read, and had these deep, dark eyes that made Spencer’s insides turn summersaults.

He followed the stories exactly. He found her before lunch, at her locker, when she wasn’t in class or distracted by any other serious tasks.

“Fiona?” He used her name to get her attention, stopping with a reasonable distance between them, but not too much distance.

“Hi Spencer,” she said. She was sorting through the folders in her locker, looking for something.

“Um, I was wondering…” Spencer pushed his glasses up his nose. Remember the story. It told you what to say. “I was wondering if you would like to go to the dance with me?”

Jenny was standing beside Fiona – they were always together – and she let out a laugh. “Oh my God, Fiona, the crazy kid just asked you to the spring fling!”

“I’m not crazy,” Spencer said. His palms were starting to sweat.

“Everyone who goes to room 210 is crazy,” Jenny said. “Duh.”

“I—I’m not.” Spencer looked down at his shoes. He could feel his voice growing quieter against his will. “I have—”

“Sorry, Spencer.” Fiona seemed to have found what she was looking for. She shut her locker with a resounding click. “I’ve already got a date for the dance.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay, I—” 

“Come on,” Jenny took Fiona’s arm. “We’re gonna be late for lunch.”

 

_2006_

Derek was right – the algorithm was a good starting place, but it couldn’t account for the nuances of human psychology. Spencer enters the precinct without a word, honing in on the map they had spread over the table. Patterns, Spencer can do. His brain had always liked patterns. He takes a bird’s eye view of the case details, plotting points the algorithm had dismissed, narrowing search parameters, taking leaps of profiling that no computer could ever make.

He doesn’t know if his colleagues are talking about the geographical profile or some other part of the case; their words seem to fade into the dull hum of the precinct. Every time he glances back at the board, something else jumps out at him, some new piece of information that wasn’t there this morning that allows his marker to cut the map into smaller and smaller slices.

Derek’s hand on his shoulder startles him so badly, Spencer nearly streaks red marker across the middle of the map.

“Sorry,” Derek says, pulling his hand back immediately. “You weren’t responding to me.”

Spencer looks up at him, mouth hanging open just a fraction, which Derek takes as an invitation to continue.

“We were just saying, the Unsub, she probably has medical training.” She? When had they determined that? Spencer was regretting going back to the hotel, now. “Maybe a doctor, nurse, or EMT.”

Focus returning to the map, Spencer scans it for a moment before jabbing his finger at it. There, in the convergence of several circles, a triangulation, and some rather creative shading, is the blue H for Hospital.

There is a flurry of activity, phones ringing and vests strapped on. Hotch gives Spencer and JJ the order to stay put, and Spencer agrees.

Derek cuffs Spencer gently. “Nice job, Doc.”

Spencer smiles, mumbling to himself. “You ask for miracles. I give you the FBI.” 

“Die hard!” Derek’s smile is like sunflowers and summer days as he strides backward out of the conference room. “My man!”

 

_1991_

At the end of the school year, Mrs. Briggs introduced Spencer and the rest of his class to Mrs. Mills, who ran the classroom like hers at the high school. They got special permission slips to miss half a day of school and bus over there to see the room and meet some of the students.

The new room made Spencer nervous. It wasn’t as cozy as Mrs. Briggs’ room. There were no bean bag chairs. Spencer wasn’t sure how Mrs. Mills would feel about poetry.

Also, there were no white binders.

He took all of this in quickly, in the first few seconds upon entering. Mrs. Briggs was still making introductions.

Spencer shook Mrs. Mills hand politely when it was his turn.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said. Her hair was a dark, chin-length bob. “I’ve heard a lot about all of you.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Spencer repeated. “Do you have stories?”

Mrs. Mills looked at him kindly. “The school has an extensive library – much larger than the one at the middle school – and I’d be more than happy to show you how to check out a book.”

“I know how to check about a book.” Spencer tried not to bristle. _Sometimes people make assumptions that are untrue. This does not make them bad people._ “I mean like the stories Mrs. Briggs has.”

Mrs. Briggs stepped in to clarify. “Do you mean the social stories? In the binders?”

Spencer nodded. Mrs. Mills walked over to a tall cabinet and swung open the door. Inside, there were shelves of comb-bound books. “I have some of the same ones that Mrs. Briggs has and some different ones.”

“Spencer is a big fan of social stories,” Mrs. Briggs said.

Spencer nodded. “They make things make sense.” 

He was feeling a little better about this room. Maybe.

 

_2006_

Spencer has his ear piece in, staring at the map as he listens to the team’s chatter. He can picture them when he lets his eyes lose focus, picture their expressions and body language. Garcia’s voice is on the line, too, as she digs into the pasts of the hospital employees, trying to match someone to their profile.

Derek is speaking more to her than the rest of the team, using his expertise to guide her searches. They work so well together. Sometimes their conversation jumps ahead, something unsaid happening in the space between them, something that takes Spencer another moment to work out.

“That brings us down to three, sugarplum,” Garcia says, the sound of her fingers tapping keys carrying faintly over the line.

“Property records,” Derek suggests. “Who would have a place to stash a bunch of drugged up teenagers?”

The clicking increases, then it’s happening fast. Their phones beep as Garcia dumps information onto them – personnel records, photographs, and an address.

Hotch reacts immediately, his authoritative tone commanding the line. “Greenaway and I will stay with the hospital, see if we can find her. Gideon, take Morgan and head to the house.”

Spencer bites his thumbnail, his finger on the map tracing the route they should take. Normally, he would be giving directions into the comm, but the words still aren’t there. He bites down too far, drawing blood.

It seems to take forever, the earpiece full of the sounds of engines, of the shifting of bodies. Then, running feet, barked orders, Derek’s voice identifying them as FBI before the sound of wood cracking beneath his boot.

There is a long pause before Gideon’s voice cracks, low and relieved across the line. “They’re here. All of them. We need paramedics, but they’re all here.”

Spencer smiles to himself, allowing a breath to rattle out of his chest. 

“Just this once,” he whispers. “Everybody lives.”

 

_1991_

Spencer wasn’t unrealistic. He knew high school wasn’t going to be magically different from middle school, or elementary school before it. He’d still be younger than everyone else, nerdy, and awkward. He’d still need his stories.

He’d hoped it wouldn’t get quite this terrible quite this fast, though. It was only lunch time on the first day. He’d kept his head down, he’d followed all of his stories, done everything right. He was being normal; he could feel it.

Until a boy, who towered over Spencer’s small frame, had bumped him hard on the way to the lunch tables. The tray lurched out of Spencer’s hands, food splattering across the floor.

Laughter spread out from him like a ripple across the lunch room. Words floated back to him, words that had floated around him since he started going to school and a few new ones that made suppositions about him that he hadn’t even considered yet.

Spencer did the only thing he could think of. He bolted to Mrs. Mills room. She was at lunch, too, but luckily she’d left her classroom door unlocked. There were no bean bag chairs, so Spencer yanked his mother’s copy of _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ from his backpack and wiggled into the safest space he could find. 

When Mrs. Mills got back from lunch, she found Spencer curled under her desk. His voice didn’t come back for three days.

 

_2006_

That night, after the half dozen boys are safe in the hospital, their prognosis positive, Derek comes back to Spencer’s hotel room.

“Hey pretty boy,” he says quietly. He’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt, smelling of hotel soap. “You feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Spencer shuts the door behind him. “My voice came back about an hour ago.”

“That doesn’t happen often,” Derek observes.

“Once or twice a year,” Spencer says. “It happened a lot more when I was a kid.”

He sits on the foot of his bed again, but Derek doesn’t slump back into the armchair. Instead, he sits next to Spencer on the bed. Spencer fights to contain the blush creeping up his neck.

“Does something specific trigger it?”

Spencer shakes his head. “I’ve been feeling kind of overstimulated all day, but no. Nothing specific.”

Spencer can feel Derek’s eyes on his face. His hands twitch in his lap.

“I was really worried about you,” Derek whispers. His hand is warm as it wraps around one of Spencer’s, taking the tremor out of it.

“I, um.” Spencer slowly turns his hand over so they are palm to palm. Derek laces their fingers together. He can feel the pieces clicking into place, but the full puzzle isn’t visible yet. “I should tell you, then.”

“Tell me what, baby boy?”

The nickname sends a shiver down Spencer’s spine. The tone Derek is using is different from when he talks to Garcia or any woman Spencer has ever seen him pick up. It is low and graveled, soft and warm, a swirl of deep green, and it settles itself low in Spencer’s belly.

“The reason why it happened.” With his free hand, Spencer plucks a coin from his pocket and sends it dancing across the back of his knuckles. “When I was eight, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s.”

The silence between them grows, pressing on his ears. Spencer flips the coin against his palm and squeezes it hard enough that the edges dig in painfully. He risks a glance at Derek’s face.

“Oh,” Derek says suddenly. “I didn’t think you were finished.”

“N-no,” Spencer shrugs. “That’s pretty much it.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I knew that. I mean, I didn’t _know_ , but. I knew.”

Spencer blushes. “That obvious, huh?”

Derek squeezes his hand. “Not like that. I wasn’t sure until this afternoon. With the quoting stuff.”

“Echolalia,” Spencer says automatically. “Sometimes it’s easier to use someone else’s words.”

“I get that.”

Spencer stares down at their hands. “I also need you to be really specific with me. I’m not very good at interpreting meaning from behavior and context.”

“Spencer, you analyze behavior for a living.”

“Yeah, I can figure out strangers, that’s looking at clues and deciphering the larger patterns. A scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defense against the pure emotion of fear, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_. But when I throw _me_ into the mix…”

“Then let me be obvious.” Derek closes the space between them slowly, giving Spencer plenty of time to pull away. The kiss is soft, a slow press of longing that Spencer finds himself pressing back into before he can analyze the reaction. The response is automatic, goosebumps erupting down his neck, his shoulders, his arms.

Spencer’s head spins when Derek pulls back. He thinks of all the times Derek tried to make the world a more comfortable place for him, tried to meet his needs even when he wasn’t sure what those needs were. The way he positioned himself as a buffer, a barrier between Spencer and everything else.

“Oh how hard it is to find/The one just suited to our mind.”

Derek laughs softly and the warmth of being understood settles in Spencer’s chest like a bird in a nest. Derek leans in again, but Spencer stills him with a hand to his bicep.

“Today’s been kind of—” Spencer makes a gesture to convey how much the world seems to be filled with right now.

“Overstimulating?”

“Yeah. Do you think we could kiss tomorrow, instead?”

“Anytime, pretty boy,” Derek grins. “Anytime.”

**Author's Note:**

> Reid's echolalia:
> 
> how am I going to be an optimist about this  
> \- From Pompeii, by Bastille [the only quote that doesn't actually work with the timeline]
> 
> If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it.  
> \- Mahatma Gandhi
> 
> Words, words. They're all we have to go on.  
> \- From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
> 
> I'm not much but I'm all I have.  
> \- From Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K Dick
> 
> If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.  
> \- Giannina Braschi
> 
> I will shout until they know what I mean.  
> \- From the King of Carrot Flowers, by Neutral Milk Hotel
> 
> You ask for miracles. [Theo,] I give you the FBI.  
> \- From Die Hard
> 
> Just this once, everybody lives.  
> \- From Doctor Who
> 
> A scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear.  
> \- From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
> 
> Oh how hard it is to find/The one just suited to our mind  
> \- Thomas Campbell


End file.
